The safe and economical operations of a reactor driven by a small proton accelerator
An accelerator can be used to increase the safety and neutron economy of a power reactor and transmuter of long-lived radioactive wastes, such as minor actinides and fission products, by providing neutrons for its subcritical operation. Instead of the rather large subcriticality of k=0.9-0.95 which we originally proposed for such a transmutor, we propose to use a slightly subcritical reactor, such as k=0.99, which will avoid many of the technical difficulties that are associated with large subcriticality, such as localized power peaking, radiation damage due to the injection of medium-energy protons, the high current accelerator, and the requirement for a long beam-expansion section. We analyzed the radiation damage of the target area, and discuss the necessity of high neutron economy to transmute the long lived fission products using the fast reactor system.
- Research Organization:
- Brookhaven National Lab., Upton, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-76CH00016
- OSTI ID:
- 10159799
- Report Number(s):
- BNL-60448; CONF-9405173-1; ON: DE94013754
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 8. Jounees SATURNE accelerator applied to the nuclear waste problem,Saclay (France),5-6 May 1994; Other Information: PBD: [1994]
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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